love is weird
"i loved you on this day. i love this memory"
love is weird. usually i’m okay. it’s been about a year. i’ve gone to therapy and coaching and worked on myself over the past two years—in the midst of it, and after. i have acceptance now and have had it for a long time now. but sometimes, just sometimes, i get the voice in my head whispering, ‘what could’ve been?’
it’s a phrase i repeat to my friends so often. ‘it would’ve been so good if he wasn’t an idiot.’ and i catch myself in it every time. that’s why it wasn’t good, stupid.
‘what if he’s changed?’ i say. and i catch myself in it again. that’s what you thought the first time. and the second time. and the third time. in response, my friends tell me that even if he has or ever will, i don’t deserve a struggle love. i don’t deserve to be put through hell first to finally be loved by the end of it all. that’s not what love is. my mum just tells me no one ever changes. i think they’re right.
love is weird.
i read the Qur’an that he gave me every single morning. i get angry that he’s getting my blessings. why am i sharing it with him? punish him. hope he’s okay. punish him. hope he’s okay, i whisper to the ground during my prayers. i want him to be so scared when he sees You on the day of judgement. i want him to feel so much regret that it burns when You hold him accountable for how he treated me. but let him go to heaven after. i don’t want him to go to hell.
love is weird. it doesn’t really go anywhere, it just quietens down. it’s no longer a burning flame that dances violently to an invisible wind. it’s died down, it’s gentle, it’s small—but still a flame, nonetheless. it might just take a bit longer to burn your finger, that’s all.
everyone talks about the passion of love and the pain of heartbreak. but what do you do once those things aren’t as intense anymore? when the hatred got worse before i finally let it go, when the nights of crying have left, when i don’t want to go back to what ruined me, when acceptance lingers? what do i do with everything left in the space between?
the prayer mat he bought me once is here. i said i liked it at the masjid shop and he simply picked it up and paid for it. i was so confused. no one had ever done that for me before. i use it to pray when it’s dark. it’s fluffy and keeps my feet warm.
he made me a little 3D star out of paper once. it’s still on my bedside table, on top of a candle lid. it stares at me when i place my chamomile tea down in the evenings, or when i reach over to turn my fan off in the mornings. it doesn’t make me miss him. it’s just there, serving as a memory of how it felt the day i received it in the mail, almost three years ago.
i have a little jewellery trinket, and inside, tucked beside my earrings and rings, are the petals of the first, and only, flowers he ever got me. my plan was to take a petal off all the flowers he bought me throughout our life together and collect them. i take hold of the dried, crispy petals in my hand and they remind me of false hopes and dreams, the facade of acting like i knew where my life would lead.
i know his mother’s recipe off by heart. sometimes, when i make it and pour the hot pepper, i still laugh when i remember the time he told me about a day he forgot he still had traces of pepper on his hand—it had a tragic result.
but then the smile fades when i remember everything else. the ghosting and ignoring and avoidance. the fact that i was so sure and certain, and he wasn’t. that he was completely indecisive and strung me along, had me waiting almost two years for something i had to end up doing—only to put an end to it, rather than let it be the beginning it was meant to be. that he told me he loved me for the first time and not a month and a half later, told me he doesn’t know if he can say it back. that after a while, i don’t remember a single day where he didn’t make me miserable. the sleepless nights, decoding his confusion. feeling happy that he was back again, only for him to disappear yet again. hearing all the words i wanted to hear and all the actions i’ve always feared. looking in the mirror and wondering what was wrong with me. not feeling good or beautiful enough because of his actions. why can’t you just want me and stay? why can’t you just love me? waiting day and night to have it go back to what it once was, just to end up having to walk on eggshells and fear for the next explosion, the next disappearance. losing myself. not recognising myself in the mirror anymore.
it’s a rollercoaster when it’s so good when it’s good but so bad when it’s bad. when you get told all the words that they know will make you stay, that makes you feel like this is it, it’s happening—just to feel them pushing away again, slipping out of your fingertips for the eleventh time. it’s like when you dangle a toy in front of a child and when they’re almost about to grab it, you take it away. it makes them laugh the first few times. then they begin to cry.
love is weird. after it all ended and i made peace with it all, i realised that my hair had stopped falling out in the shower. that’s when i realised how much the whole thing was physically stressing me out.
i vowed to never write about this because i wrote a fifteen-page handwritten goodbye letter to him and got nothing in response. that’s what makes my friend the angriest out of the million-and-one things there are to be angry about. whenever she remembers, it winds her up. i drink my tea as i sit down and listen to her rant about it: that boy does not care at all! not even a simple ‘sorry’ at the very least after reading all that?
i laugh to mask the pain and remind her of the time when, a few months after giving him the letter, she told me to ask him how long it would take until we could talk about it. and when i did, he said ‘it’ll take months.’
‘MONTHS?’ she yelled at the time. and my therapist had the exact same reaction that week. ‘MONTHS?’
‘that’s what my friend said!’ i laughed.
months that never came in the end, closure i gave myself out of being fed up.
i should’ve felt angry when he put my parents through the same thing he put me through. instead, i was happy when i saw their frustration. ‘do you see now? do you finally understand what i mean? this is what i’ve been going through for the past two and a half years.’
it differs from time to time, but lately i think the thing that still makes me so angry is that we could’ve been great, if he was.
my mosque hosted a show, live-streamed on youtube, that i was a part of. i got proposals afterwards. messages sent to my dad and my mum, listing name, height, age, education. i stared at my phone and showed my friend.
‘it’s like they’re applying for a job,’ she said.
‘well, i wouldn’t have to have these dumb job-application-type proposals if he wasn’t so annoying. i could’ve had such a nice love story.’
everyone wonders why i’m still so nice to him. ‘you’re better than me’ is a sentence i hear all the time. but i don’t call myself a SabrGirl for no reason. i’m not risking my own afterlife when Allah is Al-’Adl, the Just, and will be the One to hold people accountable, i say. that, if anything, i’m going to save it for the day of judgement. it’s a day of fear but equally a day of hope.
the truth is, i also just don’t have it in me. Allah simply didn’t create me like that. but i’ve hated myself for being too nice. it makes me angry. and i get angry about my love. i let it fall into the wrong hands, gave it to someone who didn’t deserve it. my friends ask me what i saw in him. i’m not sure, i say. everything. and nothing. potential, is what i land on.
love is weird. sometimes i think he just loved the way i loved him.
looking at all the objects in my room, i think about the movie eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. i wonder to myself. would i, too, want to erase my memories of him? i have prayed for Allah to wipe my mind of it all.
but then i wonder, would i be like Joel and realise during the procedure that even with all the happy memories, along with the heartbreaking, painful ones, they all made me who i am today? would i also realise that i want to treasure everything, rather than forget them—even the bad? would i want to look at the Qur’an and prayer mat and star and petals and still remember who it came from, remember those moments and think ‘yeah. he did treat me like trash but i was happy then, that day’?
the people we meet in this life form a big part of us. sometimes that makes me angry, when i see how a part of me has found a place in his character. i remember the day he told me three years ago, after he went to play football, that i inspired him to romanticise things more, to take more pictures of things. he took a picture of the sky and sent it to me. it was pretty and he said it made him feel nice.
he also said that he liked how i always say ‘i’m proud of you’ and how validating it is. he said he was going to start saying it to others. and does. and has. and i get angry thinking, how dare you? as if you haven’t taken enough from me and left me feeling drained time and time again. now my personality lingers on within you, too? eat rocks. you thief. you taker.
but then again, it’s also a beautiful concept at the same time. he used to say ‘eat rocks’ all the time, now i tell people to eat rocks too. he used to always say ‘son of a…’ when something happened to him, and i’d always fill in the space with ‘noob.’ now, when i drop something by accident or get annoyed, i always find myself saying ‘son of a noob.’
love is weird.
it’s painful when it’s not even reciprocated. it’s painful when you’re told, ‘i can’t love you the way you want me to.’ it’s even more frustrating when you feel so much, say so much, when you give, and give, and give, until you have nothing left. you filled their cup then you see them doing fine. how dare you be fine when you ruined me? i think to myself. just wait until the day of judgement, and we’ll see who really is fine.
hopefully the both of us.
resentment, reminiscence. anger, nostalgia. bitterness, empathy. hatred, like.
when i feel like this, i realise that i don’t really miss him. i just miss what could’ve been. fantasies i was fed. the ideal i created. and it’s annoying. because we could’ve been great, if he didn’t act the way he did.
but then i realise that it was just my imagination. most of him, i made up in my head. the punishment for not taking someone at surface level. for putting them on a pedestal, for putting your hope in potential, rather than reality.
love is weird. sometimes i wonder whether i’ll ever stop writing about this. it’s intertwined in my work, sometimes subtly, other times not. the publish button always stares at me, and i wonder whether i’ll ever press it on the ones that are explicit and direct, like this. and when i hold myself back, i wonder why i still protect him, still care to not hurt his feelings. did he?
but maybe i never will stop writing about it because the whole thing is embedded in my soul—a scar from an old, deep gush of a wound i’ll carry with me for the rest of my life. when i was a child, i used to ask my dad to tell me how he got this scar, and that scar, and that scar. scars were stories to me, stories of a past life i didn’t get to experience, a life i wasn’t alive to see. but a way to still connect with someone years later, through their recollection and memory of the pain. a way of understanding how someone lived, what they used to be—the versions of themselves i didn’t get to meet but realising how it formed the version i see.
i just hope that someone will one day trace their gentle fingertips around my own scars, carefully, with sweet delicacy.
so, if i had the choice, i don’t think i’d erase my memory. i think it would undo a core part of who i am. it’ll just always be something i’ll be reflecting back on and learning from, like sunshine that both warms and blinds. the eternal sunshine of both hardship and ease.
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
— Eloisa to Abelard, Alexandar Pope, 1717
grab a blessing:
Yaa Muqallibal Quloob thabbit qalbee ‘alaa deenik
(O Turner of the Hearts, keep our hearts firm on Your religion)
jazakallah for reading. wishing you all eternal sunshine.
sending lots of love,
— SabrGirl ♡.
I really felt every word of this :’) going through my recent situationship breakup rn, it hurts when you see so much goodness and potential in these guys then they act the complete opposite, or even worse. May Allah bless you immensely for your comforting and powerful words Ameen 🤍🤍
First off, thank you so much for sharing this
As I was reading, I was reminded of something I once heard
“Nostalgia doesn’t always reflect how the relationship truly was. It paints a prettier picture, making us long for what we had while conveniently blurring out the pain and struggles that came with it.”
It makes me question some memories I made with people have fallen out with and think, was it really that great, or is it my brain trying to paint it prettier